Tom Sant: Persuasive Business Proposals

Tom Sant's book is a must read for anyone who is looking to create better proposals that win more work. It explains his philosophy of client-focused proposals and why they don't just appeal to clients, but why they win.

Sant is a renowned proposal consultant and business owner with a wealth of experience in developing proposals, strategies and tools for major organisations that want to increase the amount of work they win - this gives him a serious amount of evidence to back up his claims - in fact backing up your claims with evidence is a core principle in Persuasive Business Proposals.

The book itself is easily digestible and provides clear and practical guidance on how to improve your proposal writing processes and content. Persuasive Business Proposals has four sections:

• Why you need this book
• A primer on persuasion
• How to manage the process and keep your sanity
• Writing to win

Why you need this book

This short introduction looks at the challenges of the proposal writing process and takes a (sometime anecdotal) look at the proposal writing capability in a typical organisation. He makes it clear that the capability doesn't exploit most organisations potential to sell and that even some well known, large organisations are missing out on opportunities - because their proposals don't persuade.

A primer on persuasion

This is where Sant hit's his stride and starts to explain his method - apply clear client-focused value statements in proposals. This is the section that not only every proposal writer, but every salesperson should read before they ever put pen to paper.

In many ways, Sant writes about applying in the written word what many good sales people do naturally...when in a face-to-face selling situation - promoting features of a solution and explaining the advantages and benefits to create value to that person in front of them. Yet put a barrier of paper and a deadline between that salesperson and the client and those messages can disappear.

Sant believes in:

• Outlining the problem or business need
• Stating the client's ideal situation
• Explaining how your solution solves the business problem
• Backing up your case with evidence

He really hammers home that to win more contracts proposals must focus on the client. He extends this out to explaining about writing for different types of client and how to best provide evidence of your credibility.

How to manage the process and keep your sanity

We getting more practical now - looking at how to present a structured, logical proposal as well as the production process. Sant looks at letter proposals in addition to full formal proposals and even research and grant proposals.

This is a really useful section, full of good advice on how to present your value proposition effectively. It's relevant, but if I want a book on the practicalities of managing the proposal development life-cycle then Harold Lewis's "Bids, Tenders and Proposals" is hard to beat (we'll be reviewing Lewis's book in our next newsletter).

Writing to win

The final section is all about the importance of not losing credibility by using poorly constructed English, but comes across as Sant showboating his English Language lecturing pedigree.

There is though a valuable lesson - poor English confuses, damages and can cost you business. Sant emphasises the importance of proposal planning - finishing writing early to edit, re-write and refine proposals to improve them. A reminder to any proposal writer that finishing proposals at 2:00am the day before submission isn't giving you the best chance of success.

This book is a definite recommendation. It's easy to read and I challenge any proposal writer to read it and not learn something that helps them produce more effective and better proposals.